Western ‘Pension Crisis’ Reflects Investment Incompetence
A Reuters article published today tells us that (once again) dangerously under-funded Western pension funds are lurching toward a “crisis”. In some respects, a pension crisis in the corrupt, debt-bloated economies of the Western industrialized world was inevitable. The massive accumulation of debt is a large and relentless “drag” on the economies of these nations – guaranteeing lower rates of return over the long run for most asset classes. This is coupled with the massive “pension overhang” of the spendthrift baby-boomers, who not only buried our nations in debt, but then squandered most of their own wealth in mindless consumption.
Proving, however, that you can always “make a bad situation worse”, the administrators of pension funds have also mirrored the incompetence of most mainstream financial advisors – who have gone from being architects of “wealth creation” to the implements of “wealth destruction”.
The proof of the utter incompetence of almost all these suit-stuffers is abundant, and it starts with the Golden Rule of investing: “buy low and sell high”. What do we see virtually all mainstream financial advisors and pension fund administrators doing today? They are selling equities (which have been plunging in value), and (so we have been told) are paying the highest prices in history to buy U.S. Treasuries.
In other words, all of these investment “experts” are doing precisely the opposite of what they should do if they want to make money (for their clients/beneficiaries): they are selling low and buying high. Of course “buying high” is an enormous understatement – given that the “value” of any/all U.S. Treasuries is zero (or close to it). Again, this is something which can be demonstrated in various ways.
Former Reagan economic advisor, Professor Lawrence Kotlikoff states unequivocally that the “correct” figure for U.S. indebtedness is not the $14+ trillion fantasy-number universally referred to as the “U.S. national debt”. Rather, the correct figure should be $211 trillion, he argues.
There is nothing surprising here. It is common knowledge that the U.S. government is hiding countless $trillions in “unfunded entitlements”. All that is “debatable” is the precise time frame over which we want to count those liabilities. Ultimately, the precise number is moot – as even the lowest possible estimate of the cost of those entitlements is utterly beyond the financial capabilities of the U.S. government (by at least a factor of ten)...
Full commentary: http://www.bullionbullscanada.…nal-commentary&Itemid=133